Murder Most Maine

by Karen MacInerney

  I stared out the window for about fifteen minutes. Tom couldn’t have murdered Dirk over Vanessa. He might have been obsessed—but obsessed enough to risk losing his kids? I just couldn’t believe it. Again, I found myself wondering about John … and banished the thought.

  I grabbed a notepad and a pen and tried to put my thoughts in order. I had to help Tom. Just had to.

  And the best way to do that was to find out who had really murdered Dirk. Something told me I already had the key to the murder; I just had to sort through and find it.

  I chewed on the cap to the pen for a moment, then started to write. First on the list was perky, beautiful Vanessa, who of all the people on the island had the clearest motive for getting rid of the trainer. Not only was her personal relationship with him troubled, but she evidently viewed him as a business liability, too, if the letters from her attorney were anything to go on. There was also the potential book deal, from which Dirk’s name was notably absent. Did he find out about it—or the letters from the attorney—and threaten to do something to her? Did she respond by getting rid of him before he could cause more problems?

  I thought about the way Dirk had died—not by a knife or gun, which is what you would expect of a jealous person—but by poison. Which had always seemed to me the method of a calculating person—not the weapon of choice for a crime of passion. And as far as access was concerned, I was guessing that wasn’t a problem for Vanessa.

  The wind sighed around a corner of the inn as I tried to piece things together. There was no way to know for sure whether Vanessa had had access to Dirk’s supplements, but since they were working closely together, it was a good bet. Was the cost of buying him out of the business too high for her? And Vanessa had told John that she wanted to end things with Tom, but her cheeks had been glowing after her late-night sortie. Had Dirk been interfering with her romantic plans as well?

  If she had murdered Dirk in order to clear the way for her relationship with Tom, though, she’d have to be awfully mercenary to let him take the rap for the crime. Was she cold-hearted enough to let her lover take the fall for her? I didn’t know, but I decided it might be time to search Vanessa’s room again. Just in case.

  I forced my thoughts away from the dark-haired retreat leader. As tempting as it was to limit my suspicions to her, she wasn’t the only one with a motive for killing Dirk. There was also Bethany, whose obsession with Dirk—not to mention the burned journal I’d found in her room—made her a prime candidate. Particularly with her colorful history of past one-sided relationships, along with the restraining orders to go with them. Had she been jealous enough of Dirk’s attention toward Vanessa to get rid of him? Had he told her to leave him alone—that he wasn’t interested in her? If Bethany couldn’t have the object of her desire, perhaps she had decided that no one would. Normally I’d expect her to have gotten rid of the competition—in this case, Vanessa—but if Dirk had spurned her, perhaps her anger had been enough to obliterate him entirely. She certainly had obliterated her journal. The crime didn’t have the hallmark of a crime of passion, and I couldn’t think of a way to prove that she had done it—I had no idea how she’d get access to ephedrine, or if she knew where the inn’s keys were located. Still, she was definitely a candidate.

  I looked out the window, my eyes tracing the line of craggy mountains on the mainland, turning the problem over in my mind. Bethany might not have known where the keys to Dirk’s room were, but someone else at the inn definitely did—in fact, I’d seen her leaving Dirk’s room the night before he died. Elizabeth, I wrote, underlining the name twice.

  Although she was theoretically a reporter, I had never confirmed that she was with Maine Monthly Magazine. And she had shown an inordinate amount of interest in the Lose-It-All business—and Vanessa.

  But why would Elizabeth kill Dirk? Reporting on a weight-loss retreat didn’t seem in any way to lead to a motive for murdering one of its leaders. Unless she wasn’t what she purported to be. Was she masquerading as a reporter in order to gain access to Dirk, to exact her revenge? Had someone in her family, or someone she loved, been damaged by Dirk’s supplements in the past? I made a note to call and confirm that she was in fact employed at Maine Monthly. And maybe find a chance to chat her up and ask some questions …

  My mind sorted through the other guests at the inn, trying to think of who else might want Dirk dead. Megan and Carissa seemed too embroiled in their own affairs to care much about Dirk, and the three sorority sisters were focused on their upcoming reunion—and supporting one of their number through a tough time. Greg was a possibility. But would a private investigator take it upon himself to murder on his client’s behalf? It didn’t make sense.

  I sucked on the end of my pen for a moment, struggling to come up with another possible suspect.

  What about John? My mind skittered away from the thought, instead turning to the police’s number one suspect: Tom. And his wife, whom I’d never seriously considered—although perhaps I should. The ephedrine had been found in their house, after all. But how would she have gotten the pills here? And why kill Dirk, and not Vanessa—or Tom? Unless the pills had somehow ended up in the wrong person’s possession …

  No, I thought. Lorraine was almost certainly innocent. She was still worth talking too, though. If nothing else, I could show her my support through what must be one of the most trying—and mortifying—times of her life.

  I resolved to visit Tom’s wife tomorrow with a batch of cookies—provided I could actually use my kitchen—then spent another ten minutes trying to come up with another suspect. I eventually gave up, tucking the notebook back into my drawer and heading downstairs to check with Gwen.

  “Are you okay?” she asked as she stowed two of the canisters in the pantry.

  “I guess so,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out a way to get Tom off the hook.”

  “Do you really think they’re going to convict him?”

  I told her what I had learned of Tom and Vanessa’s relationship, then relayed what John had told me about Dirk’s death—including the stash of ephedrine the police had found at the Lockharts’ house. “I’ve been trying to come up with a list of other suspects.”

  She sucked in her breath. “Poor Lorraine.”

  “I know,” I said. “If they’ll let me use my kitchen, I’m going to thaw some chocolate chip cookie dough and make a batch to take over tomorrow.” I’d hidden the frozen dough behind a big bag of corn in hopes that my midnight marauder would miss it. So far, the ruse had worked. “I’ve been meaning to ask: have you seen any of the guests in the kitchen?” I asked Gwen.

  “Today it was just the police,” she said.

  “I mean before that?” I said.

  “Not that I can think of,” she said. “Why?”

  “I’m missing some of my baking supplies. I think we may have a compulsive eater at the inn.”

  “What’s gone missing?”

  “Chocolate chips, some sugar, crackers, molasses, my gingersnaps … whoever it is even took all of my unsweetened baking chocolate.”

  Gwen made a face. “Honestly?”

  “No kidding,” I said. “I’m a pretty serious chocoholic, but even I wouldn’t be that desperate.” I opened the freezer and started digging for the bag of frozen dough. I was worried I might have lost half my inventory, with the police keeping the door open for what seemed like hours at a time, but it didn’t look like things had had a chance to thaw out.

  “Do you need me to help with breakfast tomorrow morning?” Gwen asked.

  “No. Evie is bringing up oatmeal and blueberry compote.”

  “What about coffee?” she asked.

  I grimaced. “I guess I’ll just have to bend the rules a bit.”

  “Let’s just hope nobody else ends up dead,” Gwen said with a rueful smile.

  ___

  After a long, much-needed bath and a couple of hours with one of J. B. Stanley’s Supper Club mysteries—her characters were all strugglin
g to lose a few pounds themselves, and I needed something to salvage my flagging motivation—I eventually fell into a fitful sleep with Biscuit curled up at my side.

  I was dreaming about a lighthouse filled to the lantern with skeletons and bits of cloth when a crash pulled me out of my dark, eerie dream world and back to the inn. I glanced at the clock—it was 2:30 a.m. Biscuit, too, was awake, green eyes glowing in the gleam of the alarm clock’s digital face.

  In seconds, I was grabbing a robe and heading down the stairs, heart thumping in my chest.

  The kitchen was dark as I raced downstairs, the treads squeaking noisily under my feet. I hit the light as soon as I reached the base of the staircase, hoping to catch my kitchen kleptomaniac, but the only sign of the intruder was the still-swinging kitchen door.

  I ran over and pushed through it, hoping to find the culprit in the dining room, but my intruder was long gone. A moment later, I heard the sound of a door closing somewhere in the inn.

  I let go of the swinging door in defeat, turning to survey the kitchen.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been—the raccoon that had plagued my pantry last fall had done much more damage. The only thing out of place was the sugar bowl, which had been knocked off the end of the counter. It must have been the bowl shattering on the wooden floor that had awakened me. After sweeping it up, I opened the refrigerator door; as I suspected, the bag of cookie dough was gone.

  Who was raiding my kitchen? I wondered. Was it Carissa, upset over her mother’s interest in Greg? Or was another guest secretly hiding a sugar obsession?

  As curious as I was to find out who was stealing my food, it really was the least of the mysteries facing me. So after a quick inventory of the fridge—the cookie dough appeared to be the only casualty, fortunately—I replaced the sugar bowl with a spare one and headed back upstairs, thankful I’d had the foresight to hide the chocolate I’d bought on the mainland in my room.

  I’d need it when I was making a second batch of dough tomorrow.

  ___

  Vanessa had given everybody a chance to sleep in—the first event of the day wasn’t scheduled to start until ten thirty—so breakfast was more of a staggered affair than usual. Evie had brought a crockpot of oatmeal over at eight thirty, along with a saucepan of blueberries she had heated and spiced. I had taken the liberty of brewing up a big pot of coffee; police orders or no police orders, there was no way I was going to serve breakfast without caffeine.

  The guests were cheery, even with the simple breakfast—probably because the blueberries were a perfect foil to the slightly cinnamon-spiced oatmeal. I had to hand it to Evie. She was one heck of a cook.

  To my surprise, Dirk’s murder wasn’t at all a topic of discussion in the dining room that morning. Only when I was refilling coffee cups the third time did I realize why: none of the guests knew there had been an arrest. And I didn’t want to ruin the morning by reminding them of what had happened just a few short days ago. Besides, it made me sick just thinking about Tom locked up in a cell somewhere, for a crime I was sure he hadn’t committed.

  At nine o’clock, the phone rang. It was Matilda. “I just got off the phone with the lab,” she said.

  “What did they say?”

  “The bones are definitely African-American or African. But the most exciting thing is that they’ve confirmed his age.”

  “How old do they think he was?”

  “From what they can see in the cranial sutures and the ribs, they’re guessing mid-thirties.”

  I thought about the newspaper article on the slave-catcher. “The male slave—James—was only in his twenties, though. At least that’s what the paper said. Do you know how old the slave-catcher was?”

  “That’s the mystery,” she said. “I can’t find anything that mentions it. But since it looks like the age rules out the male slave he was looking for …”

  “Then either it was the slave-catcher or somebody else,” I finished for her.

  “Exactly. And I can’t find another reference to an African or African-American in the area at the time, so it’s looking like it may be Otis Ball.”

  “The question is, if it is—who killed him? And why?”

  “We may never know,” she said. “Maybe he found what he was looking for—and the escapees killed him rather than go back into slavery.”

  “But what happened to Harry Atherton, the keeper?” I asked. “Was he the murderer? Is that why he left? Or did he die in the storm, like the legend says?”

  “We may never know,” she said. “But I’m hoping there will be a clue in that article—I’ve decided to go over to the mainland and get it myself today. I’ve also got a call into my friend in Yarmouth; she’s going to check the shipping records for that time period, and see what she can find.”

  “Keep me posted,” I said, glad for a momentary distraction from more recent events.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”

  “Did you hear about Tom, by the way?”

  “I did,” she said, all the excitement draining from her voice. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Me neither,” I said. And it was true: I didn’t believe it. Not for a moment.

  I hung up the phone and started another pot of coffee, gazing out the window at the lighthouse in the distance. We might not be making any progress figuring out who had murdered Dirk, but it looked like Matilda was shedding some light on what had happened 170 years ago. Still, odds were good that we would probably never know what really happened to the body in the lighthouse.

  I just hoped the same wouldn’t be said for the island’s more recent tragedy.

  ___

  By the time nine thirty rolled around, everyone had made it downstairs except Boots and Bethany. I needed to close up the kitchen at ten, so I decided to wait until nine forty-five before sending someone up to wake them.

  Bethany wandered into the dining room ten minutes later, looking like she hadn’t slept a wink. After serving herself a third big bowl of oatmeal—“after all, with Dirk gone, why bother losing weight?”—she retreated to a corner table and resumed eating mechanically.

  When Boots hadn’t rolled downstairs by the appointed hour, I stopped by the table where Cat and Sarah were finishing up their oatmeal. I refilled their coffee cups, then asked if they would mind checking on their friend. “I don’t want her to miss breakfast,” I explained.

  “Sure,” Sarah said. “I’ll run up and check on her.”

  “Thanks,” I said, refilling Cat’s coffee.

  “I wonder where she is?” she said, sipping it. “She’s usually an early bird. This isn’t like her.”

  A twinge of misgiving passed through me, but I dismissed it. If Boots was my late-night marauder, maybe she was sleeping off a chocolate hangover. “I’m sure she just forgot to set her alarm clock. And when people are on vacation, sometimes they relax their schedules a bit.”

  I had barely finished my sentence when there was a scream from upstairs.

  Cat’s face blanched. “Boots,” she whispered, and then we were both in motion, running for the stairs.

  At first glance, it looked like she’d died in her sleep. She was stretched across the bed, one limp hand dangling over the edge of the side, her friend doubled over her, calling her name again and again. Sarah’s moaning voice sounded eerily like a chant.

  But Boots wasn’t ever going to answer again. Nor, I realized with a sick feeling in my stomach, was she going to make her college reunion.

  I reached out to draw Sarah away from her friend’s body, but she wouldn’t let go of the woman’s cold hand.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” I said soothingly. “She’s gone.”

  “But … but she can’t be dead!” Sarah wailed. “She just can’t be! We were going to go to the reunion together!” Cat came forward, tears in her huge eyes, and drew her friend away from the inert form on the bed.

  The oatmeal I had eaten a half hour earlier seemed to congeal in my stoma
ch as I took in the scene. Boots was dressed in a blue nightshirt, as if she had been asleep when she died. But other than the pillow that had been pulled from the top of the bed and placed beneath her head, the bed was still neatly made—and her pale face was mottled with purplish spots I hadn’t seen before. Alarm bells went off in my head at the wrongness of the scene: the body askew on the bed, the covers still in place, the purplish splotches … A disturbing thought stole into my mind.

  Had she fallen victim to the same person who had murdered Dirk?

  And if so—why?

  ___

  Within ten minutes, John had secured the room and was on the phone with the mainland police, who were sending the coroner—and the forensics team—over to Cranberry Island once again. The guests were in the dining room, talking in hushed murmurs about the discovery upstairs; when I’d picked up the last of the breakfast dishes, Sarah and Cat had been huddled together by the window, their faces streaked with tears. I eyed Vanessa closely, looking for signs of something—guilt, maybe?—but nothing looked out of the ordinary. She looked solemn and in control as she went from table to table, checking up on her clients.

  The 10:30 jog was delayed, obviously, in light of the morning’s discovery. The retreat was turning out to be a total disaster. Should I throw in the towel and make a batch of cookies to comfort everyone? I wondered. Then I remembered that the bag of cookie dough was gone, so I would have to make them from scratch. Besides, my kitchen was still officially closed. Stacking the last of the dirty bowls, I retreated to the kitchen, seeking solace in the routine of washing the dishes—and praying Boots hadn’t been poisoned.

  John pushed through the swinging door as I loaded the last dish into the rack. Although his presence, as always, sent a little charge through me—today he wore a pine-colored wool sweater that intensified the green of his eyes and a pair of faded jeans that fit him perfectly—there was still a huge wrongness between us. And this morning, his expression chilled me. There were deep furrows in his brow, and below those green eyes, his lips were a tight line.